It is natural that the administrative people would want the undoubted administrative convenience of the certificate and we know that nothing can reasonably go wrong, that these are matters of proof which could not be controverted, but the whole purpose of a trial is defeated if you are going to act indiscriminately on certificates. I was one of those who opposed Deputy Cowan's amendment regarding uniforms and agreed with the Minister and I still hold that view but you may have a case where you merely rely on the fact that a man puts on the uniform of the Reserve. He is not on training or on active service. He is not in the ordinary sense subject to military law but he is made subject to it for an indefinite duration. There is no record of his being in service. Nobody is going to take a note that officer A was in uniform for 24 hours on July 21st in 19—. There is no record there in the first place that he was in uniform. There may be cases where there may be a record but I am contemplating a case where there is no record. For the material purpose of trial it will depend on the positive evidence of the persons who are present and saw him to ground the charge in regard to jurisdiction. It would be very dangerous in my view to leave a matter of that nature to a question of certification.
Take the concrete case that we discussed before : an officer goes to a social function in uniform ; he there meets a superior officer and behaves towards that superior in an insubordinate and scandalous manner. We were agreed, in spite of Deputy Cowan's amendment on the last occasion, that he should be guilty of an offence and be amenable to military law. He not being subject to military law in the ordinary way, you have to prove that he was and, to ground the offence, you must prove that he was in uniform. I mean that it part of the proof of the offence. I think that should be proved in the ordinary way. There will be no difficulty because, in the case of all these offences, he will have to produce witnesses to prove the offence and they will be in a position to prove that. So, there will be no administrative inconvenience in the ordinary case and it is because it is not a matter of normal record—cases can occur where the thing will not be recorded—where the certificate so to be given is on a different basis from the certificates in the other cases—that I think Deputy Cowan's amendment should be considered. Let me put the grounds of certification here. Perhaps, from a legal point of view, the other members of the Committee may not appreciate this—what is the legal concept of certificates of this nature ? The legal concept is this : First of all the law always wants first-hand evidence but then the law goes on to say in the case of public officers and in the case of public documents there is a strong presumption that everything is done properly and regularly and because you can presume that public officers keep their certain records properly you permit public officers to certify from their records certain things and that would be accepted as evidence. If this was a type of charge where there would be a formal public record—I mean public in the sense of official—in the Adjutant-General's or some other Department, that on the —— day of ————— Officer A of the Reserve was in uniform from 4 o'clock to 6 o'clock and, therefore, was subject to military law from 4 o'clock to 6 o'clock, then I would say you would have ample grounds or certification and, if that record were there, kept by an officer charged with keeping such records, I would agree that the production of that record would be sufficient evidence and I would agreed that a certificate by a proper officer based on that record would be ample and I would agree with the Minister.
In, say, the case of a social function there will be no record that that officer was in uniform and, at that point, subject to military law, that when it comes to certification the officer who would be issuing the certificate would not be issuing it from duty, from public records or from records kept in duty, but would in fact be issuing it on hearsay, on the evidence of certain people who would have told him, grounding the crime, that he was there. That certificate would be in that case essentially hearsay as against a certificate operating under duty in the other sense.
